Expand Your Insurance Agency's Book of Business with an Online Referral Program

Referral programs are often a standard part of an independent insurance agent’s toolkit. However, traditional programs take time to develop and manage. Thanks to the Internet, there are now digital tools to automate your agency’s referral program. This frees you up to get back to doing what you enjoy most: connecting with prospects and cultivating relationships with customers.

"The online referral program is a turnkey solution for us. When a referral is made, the referee is sent a unique link directing her back to the quote entry site. This site contains a tracking script at the end of the quote form which "locks" the referral to the person who referred her based upon simple HTML and an automated email confirmation. The system is entirely automated. It will send an email to the person who gave the referral requesting them to set up their account. When a referral is made, the system will automatically pay the person the set referral fee via PayPal.

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The best part is that the system will send automated emails periodically asking our existing client base for new referrals and provide them with a fresh link to send us a new customer.

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We do not touch our referral program. It simply sends us business and debits our referral fees from our account.

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Timing is very important when asking for referrals. For our business the time to ask is right when they are the most happy about saving on their insurance. The HelloSign eSignature process redirects all clients to our referral program website via a custom URL so they can sign up with only name and email immediately after completing the application."

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Comparing Online Referral Programs

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Not sure where you to begin your research comparing online referral programs? Here are three services to consider for your agency.

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ReferralCandy targets retailers but as you saw above with Chase Henderson, the service is used by insurance agents, too. You can send an email to customers or show a popup after they make a purchase, include a link in your newsletters, manually invite them through the ReferralCandy dashboard or invite them in bulk through a CSV upload. Pricing is based on minimum usage and a commission fee. You don’t pay the usage fee if the commission for the month is higher than the minimum usage fee.

Rocket Referrals is an online referral program specifically for insurance agents. The product utilizes its Smart Referral Algorithm to identify which of your customers are likely to refer and then sends targeted communication to get them to do so. Rocket Referrals offers three tiers of pricing based on the number of contacts: $80/month (500 contacts), $150/month (4,000 contacts) and $350/month (10,000 contacts).